Restoration Selection Sample Clauses

Restoration Selection. The goal of restoration under the OPA and OSPRA is to restore natural resources injured by incidents to the condition that they would have been if the incident had not occurred. The OPA and OSPRA regulations require that this goal be achieved by restoring natural resources and compensating for interim losses of those resources and their services that occur during the period of recovery.

Restoration Selection. 5.1 Restoration Approach A major goal of OPA and OSPRA is to make the environment and public whole for injury to or loss of natural resources and services as a result of a discharge or substantial threat of a discharge of oil. The OPA and OSPRA regulations require that this goal be achieved by restoring injured natural resources to baseline conditions (i.e., primary restoration) and compensating for interim losses of ecological services that ensue during the period of recovery (i.e., compensatory restoration). For primary restoration, the Trustees and EMPCo considered both the natural recovery option and active primary restoration at the spill site. Upon completion of emergency response, containment and cleanup activities by EMPCo, the Trustees and EMPCo elected to forego active primary restoration and rely on natural recovery of the injured resources and services because actions to remove oil from sediments could have exacerbated the injury. For compensatory restoration, the OPA and OSPRA regulations clearly establish trustee responsibility to seek compensation for interim losses pending recovery of the natural resources if technically feasible, cost-effective alternatives exist to compensate for these losses. Since interim losses will accrue during the period of recovery and technically feasible, cost-effective alternatives exist to compensate for these losses, the Trustees and EMPCo elected to proceed with identifying a preferred compensatory restoration alternative. In October 2016, the Trustees and EMPCo agreed to settle the NRDA damage claim for cash, in lieu of EMPCo implementing compensatory restoration. The cash settlement dollar amount developed by the Trustees and presented in Section 5.3 of this Final DAPRP is predicated on two Trustee-implemented compensatory restoration projects, and includes future project implementation costs. The following sections summarize the process the Trustees followed to select a preferred restoration alternative and estimate costs for implementing a freshmarsh and saltmarsh creation project in the future.